Episode#:18 Shaun Boyce and Bobby Schindler
ATP: True Tennis VR – play tennis anytime, anywhere with Virtual Reality Tennis
TrueTennisVR lets you play tennis anytime, anywhere. With a Meta Quest 2, their TrueRacket, and the TrueTennisVR software, you’re able to work out, build skills, compete on leaderboards, and work with your coach, any time, anywhere.
Shaun Boyce USPTA: [email protected]
https://tennisforchildren.com/ 🎾
Bobby Schindler USPTA: [email protected]https://windermerecommunity.net/ 🎾
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Transcript
Welcome to the Atlanta tennis podcast.
Speaker:Every episode is titled, "It starts with tennis and goes from there."
Speaker:We talk with coaches, club managers, industry business professionals, technology experts, and
Speaker:anyone else we find interesting.
Speaker:We want to have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.
Speaker:Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the Atlanta tennis podcast, powered by GoTennis!
Speaker:In this episode, we talk with Mark Segan of True Tennis VR.
Speaker:True Tennis VR lets you play tennis anytime, anywhere.
Speaker:With a meta quest, their true racket, and the true tennis VR software, you're able to
Speaker:work out build skills, compete on leaderboards, and work with your coach anytime, anywhere.
Speaker:Have a listen and let us know what you think.
Speaker:Our job is to make you look good and get to know you and a little bit about true
Speaker:tennis VR, but I want you to start with yourself if you don't mind and tell me who you
Speaker:are, kind of a little bit of.
Speaker:We just found out you graduated Princeton, so that's a connection that we have.
Speaker:So from there, how would you tell your story as to how you ended up working with True Tennis VR?
Speaker:Well there are two threads to that, right?
Speaker:There's tennis and then there's technology and so-called career.
Speaker:I graduated from Princeton with a degree in philosophy, which of course takes you into product
Speaker:development.
Speaker:You too?
Speaker:I have a philosophy for myself.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Then naturally you went there up to me tennis.
Speaker:I hear you.
Speaker:Well I immediately went into product development, invention, really.
Speaker:And for many years I was inventing, there's another thread too.
Speaker:There's a music thread.
Speaker:We invented a lot of toys, a lot of high tech Christmas decorations.
Speaker:The first musical greeting card.
Speaker:If you ever look up Fisher prices, triple arcade tournament table, which was this enormous
Speaker:thing, great fun.
Speaker:Goodness.
Speaker:Look up animated animations and animation art that moves in talks, work with all the major
Speaker:studios, had a lot of fun.
Speaker:More recently I ran, there was a company I co-founded many years ago.
Speaker:In so-called Internet of Things, which means reading data from machines and objects rather than talk
Speaker:to people.
Speaker:This was electric energy, and I ran that for a few years and just finished up that assignment
Speaker:as it were.
Speaker:Free to concentrate on true tennis VR at this point.
Speaker:The music piece, the music musical greeting card is also a little bit of musician and writes
Speaker:pretty silly songs.
Speaker:That was going to be my next question.
Speaker:I have a music performance minor.
Speaker:No kidding.
Speaker:I like to think picture myself a musician a bit as well.
Speaker:It's fun to hear.
Speaker:Oh, this is good.
Speaker:We're going to get along just fine.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:I love to listen to music.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:You're like, oh, that.
Speaker:I'd love to listen to it.
Speaker:My wife proved to me against all my understanding of the world that there is such a thing
Speaker:as tone deafness.
Speaker:Yeah, I can prove it to you.
Speaker:I can do it.
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:I believe it now.
Speaker:I didn't.
Speaker:And yet my daughter sings like you can't believe so.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's a pretty powerful gene because both my kids are pretty tongue deaf, which is bad.
Speaker:But I agree.
Speaker:It can skip for sure.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not directly genetic, but we don't know.
Speaker:So you got music, you got invention.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You end up doing tennis in Versailles, reality.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:My dad played tennis and introduced us all to tennis.
Speaker:And of course, we've been playing my brother and I.
Speaker:And with my dad who's gone now.
Speaker:I play a ton of tennis.
Speaker:My brother's an excellent player.
Speaker:I'm all right.
Speaker:And as you can imagine, I created a strange game because I'm an inventor.
Speaker:And so I actually play two hands both sides.
Speaker:And I had to go through initially playing lefty and then switching to righty and then figuring
Speaker:out the grips, which was, you know, have to be devised.
Speaker:Got to figure it out.
Speaker:It's not obvious.
Speaker:The VR piece was fantastic.
Speaker:My son, Max, he's quite a good tennis player.
Speaker:Like you said, I wanted him to be nothing like me.
Speaker:As you said, Bobby.
Speaker:So he's got a terrific serve and really nice ground strikes.
Speaker:The only similarity is he does play two hands both sides.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:But he got a longer arms than I do.
Speaker:That's pretty good.
Speaker:Play crosshanded or on one side.
Speaker:But he's.
Speaker:No, I keep the, you know, I can't swear what his grip is.
Speaker:But I keep the right hand at the bottom of the racket.
Speaker:So I just go take it.
Speaker:So you play crosshanded off of one side.
Speaker:Yes, exactly.
Speaker:Off the floor.
Speaker:Off what's so, my so cold for hand.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:I grew up with an a New Yorker as well.
Speaker:Molly then Austrian.
Speaker:And she made it to the quarterfiles of Wimbledon.
Speaker:Her father is probably 90 now and still two in the world.
Speaker:He's been two in the world since he was 40.
Speaker:And you know, in the age group king, wonderful player, wonderful man.
Speaker:But Molly was too handed one of the early, before Monica Cellesca's.
Speaker:I'm old.
Speaker:Yeah, well, I hear.
Speaker:I mean, it's a great game.
Speaker:If you have the, if you have the anticipation of Monica Cellesca, you can do great
Speaker:damage with the control exactly.
Speaker:So, but, but my son is a, is a, is a meta guy.
Speaker:And, and he got me the, the headset while ago.
Speaker:And we, I think we're playing ping pong on it.
Speaker:And he said, and we sort of at the same moments that this would be fantastic as tennis.
Speaker:And we started down the path and turned it into a little startup.
Speaker:And we got a great team around us of just him helping out.
Speaker:But a couple of other engineers and mechanical engineers and physicists.
Speaker:Because that's, you know, it's one of the major things that that we've focused on because
Speaker:their limitations to to the VR technology as it is, which are hard to overcome to get a
Speaker:really tough quality simulation that, that a tennis player who plays it is going to enjoy playing.
Speaker:I don't know if you may have experienced that already.
Speaker:We have it.
Speaker:And that's one of the things Bobby and I have been talking about.
Speaker:I gosh, gentlemen.
Speaker:Well, the, the goggles are free.
Speaker:One.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You've got to figure out, okay, how do we compare these VR systems?
Speaker:Because there are a few out there.
Speaker:And it isn't just the kind of thing of, okay, a few months ago I did this or a few months ago
Speaker:I did that.
Speaker:Bobby and I are scheming an idea to be able to come up with part of our industry day is we want
Speaker:to bring in some of the VR systems.
Speaker:Those that would be interested is I'd like to go from court one to court two to court three.
Speaker:It's okay.
Speaker:Here's true tennis VR.
Speaker:Here's VR number two.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Oh, sure.
Speaker:I just really compare them because as a tennis player, I will admit I am fully skeptical that
Speaker:this is going to feel anything real.
Speaker:I believe it yet.
Speaker:And I really am looking forward because I, we've talked to the true believers of how good these
Speaker:things are.
Speaker:And whether or not Jack Sock tells me it's great, is not for me.
Speaker:I need to know, okay, is this real?
Speaker:Is this real meaning I can feel it?
Speaker:And there's a, there's a special thing that the physicist, there's a magic you have to have.
Speaker:If you're going to convince me in VR, that this is going to look even remotely like real
Speaker:tennis, making it feel like real tennis.
Speaker:I have no idea how that's going to work.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:When you say, I mean, this, you've hit on critical questions there, right?
Speaker:First of all, what's the point?
Speaker:What's the idea of what we're doing?
Speaker:We want to get lots of reps in.
Speaker:We want to make sure that how you swing produces a recognizable result to a pretty degree of precision.
Speaker:Pretty good degree of precision.
Speaker:You don't want it to be like, oh, you open the racket face, you get kind of a slice.
Speaker:You know what I mean?
Speaker:You can drop shots and above all, it should require that if you are hitting with, you know,
Speaker:it's really funny.
Speaker:I'm looking, you're both up here.
Speaker:And I'm looking at you right now, showing because you have the questions like it rhymes in a room.
Speaker:You want to make it so that you know in your bones that if I use actually proper technique
Speaker:say for the volley, that that will optimize the result, not that I can poke at it or something,
Speaker:you know, people often people, the memory that people have of we tennis, for example,
Speaker:is unbelievable.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Well, that was great.
Speaker:But of course, you know, anything you did, you just take that little rectangular control, you
Speaker:poke it, you get a beautiful result.
Speaker:Then it going to happen to tennis at all.
Speaker:Part of the simulation, of course, is using a racket.
Speaker:And that if you don't, if your grips are everything in tennis and of course swing weight to a considerable
Speaker:degree.
Speaker:So we've got, we've got a pretty nifty racket.
Speaker:And it's extremely engineered, meaning we kill ourselves on this thing in developing it.
Speaker:It's, I mean, first of all, it's very, very durable, very easy, if I show you, you know,
Speaker:you put the controller in here for a reason.
Speaker:And we may be jumping ahead, you know, here's the actual quest to controller.
Speaker:That's what used to be called the Oculus.
Speaker:And you know, the headset is this guy.
Speaker:You've seen this, your viewers, you haven't had a chance to play with any of it yet either, right?
Speaker:No, I've not.
Speaker:I put it on.
Speaker:I got to walk through a space station at a friend's house.
Speaker:That was about all I've expected, putting it on, that's as far as I got.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:It's a pretty, you know, it's really fascinating.
Speaker:One of the things that happens is somebody, hey, hey, you want to try out virtual reality
Speaker:tennis and they put the thing on and they're just minds are blown.
Speaker:Well, the minds are initially blown just because virtual reality, I'll blow your mind.
Speaker:Never mind whether, whether the particular implementation of tennis is any, any good yet.
Speaker:Well, that's why the tennis and there's a whole different experience.
Speaker:You feel like you're on a tennis court.
Speaker:The quest to is a very important step in VR, this particular product because it's so cold inside
Speaker:out, which means you don't need stanchions standing in the room to tell you, if you're
Speaker:to tell it where it is, it figures out where it is in the room, you turn your head and it's
Speaker:not like a computer screen where I'm going to turn my head and all the screens over there.
Speaker:No, no, this is like I'm turning within the room up and down everywhere.
Speaker:And it's fantastic.
Speaker:I would say certainly within VR, it's revolutionary.
Speaker:And there are a lot of apps it has.
Speaker:Many of them, of course, are what I would call sort of native VR apps.
Speaker:By app, everybody knows what an app is.
Speaker:We have our phones, we download them, right?
Speaker:And that's what any of these are.
Speaker:The truth in it's VR is an app that plays with the true racket.
Speaker:The thing about the thing about the app is it has to, it lives within the technological
Speaker:limitations of the quest to.
Speaker:And there are some, getting because the underlying software can implement physics, bouncing,
Speaker:the ball travel, all of these things, to a certain degree.
Speaker:And as I said, to a certain degree of realism and precision.
Speaker:We got pretty obsessive about that and have as we did on the racket, I guess.
Speaker:And I think what one of the two main things that distinguishes us is, apart from the racket,
Speaker:is the realism.
Speaker:I don't think it's pretty unusual.
Speaker:I would argue even unique.
Speaker:The physicists who worked on it, they push themselves.
Speaker:It's great. They're both astrophysicists, which I like the joke means they're experts at spheres
Speaker:moving through space.
Speaker:In this case, fuzz a yellow one.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:In that case, yeah, that's a good couple of guys to have.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:You have.
Speaker:And that kind of so much fun.
Speaker:And I'm really looking forward to getting a chance to play with all this because the concept
Speaker:has got to be so difficult to create.
Speaker:If you don't know what you're doing, it sounds like you've done a good job of getting the
Speaker:right team around you, getting the right people around you to say, okay, I'm not an astrophysicist.
Speaker:So I can't do this.
Speaker:And then I need to technologist to do that.
Speaker:It's not just me as an inventor going, okay, cool.
Speaker:I'm going to put a stick on a hula hoop and let's go.
Speaker:We're going to do it, right?
Speaker:These are these are great points.
Speaker:I mean, I'll tell you that for example in developing the racket because I've developed
Speaker:a hundred to products.
Speaker:Many of them electronic, but all of them requiring some degree of mechanics too.
Speaker:And I know who to engage with, how to make these things, what sort of criteria means, oh,
Speaker:this is good, this is acceptable for users, for consumers.
Speaker:The big thing with this is you have to make as much of it transparent to the user's
Speaker:possible.
Speaker:I'm not looking for somebody to become a technology expert and what's critical is I was distinguishing
Speaker:a native app from something else.
Speaker:The big thing here is that our app, true tennis VR is intended to take you from there and
Speaker:not to stay there, not to live there, yet onto a tennis court.
Speaker:That's where it's aiming all the time.
Speaker:The reps you get here should benefit what you're doing on the tennis court.
Speaker:Maybe some for reaction, maybe some for accuracy, always for a good swing, et cetera.
Speaker:The one thing you mentioned how it feels.
Speaker:So you're holding a racket, I get the right grip.
Speaker:That's my backhand grip, that's my forehand grip.
Speaker:The one thing you don't get really convincingly from this is the impact of the ball, right?
Speaker:That is a different class of physics problem.
Speaker:There's an argument that what I call the lemons to eliminate argument, which they say, if you
Speaker:got lemons, make lemonade.
Speaker:What are we doing when we do shadow swings?
Speaker:We're practicing a proper swing and acceleration, et cetera.
Speaker:Well here's a whole class of shadow swings everybody can do with a ball, right?
Speaker:The result that is insisting itself on proper technique.
Speaker:You see what I mean?
Speaker:So, I want to impact, I want to swing through the ball.
Speaker:That's what you guys are always telling me, right?
Speaker:When you're the ball, don't pull up, don't tense for the moment of contact, right?
Speaker:So that's the argument for not going toward looking for that impact and saying, that's
Speaker:one for.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:I mean, this is the target for that, which is, okay, you're doing your shadow swings.
Speaker:Don't come to me wondering when we're coming out with the impact feeling, that's not, that's
Speaker:not.
Speaker:If we've done a lot of research on that and we have paths, but I would say the real point
Speaker:is I'm joking when I say lemons to lemonade, it's irrationalizing, right?
Speaker:Oh, we don't have it, but it's in fact great, you know?
Speaker:What I'm really saying is it's not something we're rushing toward because there's so
Speaker:much benefit to be gained from doing what we're doing.
Speaker:And no reason to get it wrong.
Speaker:Well, that's for sure.
Speaker:That's, that's a great point.
Speaker:Because I think we're, I think we're looking at it and say, okay, well, if I do this, this just,
Speaker:you know, what, no, you're not there yet.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:If you generate that say, we've got the impact down and we don't think you're there yet, you
Speaker:lose credibility.
Speaker:So from your point of view, hey, look, this is shadow swings.
Speaker:It's going to give you a result.
Speaker:You will, when we have an impact, cons, when we can create that impact, and it's right, then
Speaker:we will let you know.
Speaker:But we're not just, this is recorded.
Speaker:I don't have to write that down for my own newsletter.
Speaker:You are welcome to use it.
Speaker:I'll write that.
Speaker:Because that's what we, that's what we've been looking to hear because there's always something
Speaker:out there.
Speaker:And it's another question I want to ask about how you're promoting because everybody goes
Speaker:out says, we've got this new product.
Speaker:It's amazing.
Speaker:It's the greatest thing ever.
Speaker:Here, we've hired a famous person to tell you how much they love it.
Speaker:But okay, well, I mentioned Jack Socker earlier, right?
Speaker:He's a guy I've seen with the goggles on and do it his thing.
Speaker:I'm like, okay, well, I get it.
Speaker:But you're being paid to do that.
Speaker:So there's a little bit of, do you really love it?
Speaker:Can I have an off-the-record conversation with Jack Socker and find out what he really thinks?
Speaker:But in this case, it is the feeling that says, okay, here's what we've created.
Speaker:Here's why.
Speaker:Here's how we're promoting.
Speaker:Are you promoting this as a, not as a coaching tool or are you promoting this as a practice tool?
Speaker:Is this something for me to get my steps in?
Speaker:Just doesn't really matter.
Speaker:I need to go out and do some swings and get some exercise.
Speaker:What's your target?
Speaker:We've got our target market here in Atlanta.
Speaker:I do many, three things, right?
Speaker:That all are, well, we're after.
Speaker:It's a sentiment right now, right now.
Speaker:It's essentially a simulation and as accurate and great feeling with the exception of the impact
Speaker:as can be.
Speaker:And what we've done, we're not doing that much promotion because you discovered us, for example.
Speaker:And we have a little growth curve because what we want right now, and that's why we're
Speaker:not charging for the use of the software, for example.
Speaker:We do charge pretty, pretty attractive price for the racket.
Speaker:It's $50, which is, yeah, where it's kind of, kind of,
Speaker:goofy, but we want people to be able to use it.
Speaker:And what we want is their comments.
Speaker:And we have a nice little community of users who I talk to all the time as a result.
Speaker:Where do you have that?
Speaker:Say again, where are you talking to me out by email?
Speaker:Oh, gosh, okay.
Speaker:So you said community of users and we hang out with enough gems here that are you on Discord?
Speaker:Or where are you?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Not Discord yet, right?
Speaker:You guys made a really interesting point.
Speaker:You've brought it up just now, then, Sean, about Gen Z's.
Speaker:You, I think one of your recent podcasts because you mentioned games got to get younger.
Speaker:There were two obstacles to that.
Speaker:One is what one called practice and the other is access.
Speaker:What we've got here is a technology.
Speaker:Obviously, we were just off the Nurel, they're getting a four year old.
Speaker:So 14 or 15 year old is going to be real comfortable in VR.
Speaker:And once they're told, hey, that's the thing that you're doing.
Speaker:This is going to make you a tennis player.
Speaker:We would what we're aiming at is becoming just a great way to learn to play real tennis on a real
Speaker:court.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:That's the target of growing the sport.
Speaker:I think there was a good one.
Speaker:Yeah, that is, quote Bobby Bobby's quoted as saying, you know, we spent too much time promoting
Speaker:a player or the players as opposed to promoting the sport.
Speaker:And I know Bobby's just as excited as I am to at some point, but one of these goggles on.
Speaker:Well, first of all, I want everybody out there to know for the next week, I'm going
Speaker:to be talking like this and drinking my coffee different because I've been drinking.
Speaker:Listen to that.
Speaker:I can college again.
Speaker:I just left Texas.
Speaker:I went back to New York for the summer.
Speaker:And now I come back to Texas with a much more creative vocabulary.
Speaker:So I already see the problems from this conversation.
Speaker:There is more has come up.
Speaker:Where is my vocabulary been creative or colorful?
Speaker:I think that's just implicit, Bobby.
Speaker:So I'm going to be bad for the next week.
Speaker:I'm apologizing ahead of time because I've been triggered.
Speaker:Now, love what you're saying is, and you are the first person, this is the third virtual
Speaker:company we spoke into that is actually even brought up the fact that it's not going to
Speaker:feel the same way.
Speaker:So we definitely appreciate that fact because that was one of the big things.
Speaker:I'm all about the shadow swings.
Speaker:I think it's great.
Speaker:I think it's a great way to introduce the sport.
Speaker:We talk about it all this time using the word technology and accessibility.
Speaker:So love the fact that that's what we're going toward.
Speaker:Love the fact introducing to a four year old like we introduced any other video game that they
Speaker:want to take the next step because hey, it four years old, it's not enjoyable game.
Speaker:You're either doing something you're doing with a parent because you love the parent.
Speaker:It's not because you love tennis.
Speaker:You're hanging out with your parent.
Speaker:And that's a misconception that a lot of people have up the grades.
Speaker:They never were playing tennis.
Speaker:They were playing with their parent Jimmy.
Speaker:And I was hanging with his mother.
Speaker:He didn't know about tennis at four years old.
Speaker:So yeah, I love the perspective of which you're taking it from.
Speaker:But my first question always how heavy is the racket?
Speaker:Because you brought up we and I laugh because a lot of people got hurt playing we because
Speaker:the racket was so light that they would swing too hard and they walk out the next
Speaker:day saying God, my elbows kill me.
Speaker:So where's the racket as far as weight?
Speaker:And is the actual weight of it, which has to of course include the controller is about 13 ounces.
Speaker:So fantastic.
Speaker:It's fine.
Speaker:The one thing that you got to keep in mind is there's a difference between swing weight and
Speaker:actual net weight, right?
Speaker:Because you could put the thing on a scale.
Speaker:You could put all of the 13 ounces down here.
Speaker:You got a headache, right?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But that's not where it is.
Speaker:We've tried to place the center of mass as close to a real racket as possible, given the
Speaker:other constraints.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Well, that's, I mean, in racket's have changed.
Speaker:Most of a meekle bounced down.
Speaker:I mean, Wilson was notorious historically making a heavy racket and they got out of the business.
Speaker:Everybody's pretty equal because of the way the game is played.
Speaker:So that's great.
Speaker:So now, if you brought it up and I'm no mathematician, I'm not even going to pretend.
Speaker:Can mathematics help simulate swing speed with the weight of the racket to get you an idea,
Speaker:even though you might not necessarily feel how hard you're hitting it.
Speaker:Could you mathematically extrapolate and say, well, this is we're in an area of this is what you'd
Speaker:be seeing?
Speaker:Yeah, of course, that's exactly what we're doing.
Speaker:I mean, that's a little much of what we've concentrated on.
Speaker:You know, without that, I don't know where the simulation is.
Speaker:Again, you want to, for whatever the swing is, you want the result, where the ball goes,
Speaker:how much spin it has on it, what direction is this?
Speaker:We got side spin tops, well, you know, everything.
Speaker:You know, there's, of course, you know, the way a ball travels through the air is important.
Speaker:And all of that is included.
Speaker:So yes, is the answer, of course.
Speaker:Fantastic.
Speaker:And how much space do you need?
Speaker:Depends on the particular routine you're doing, each one identifies it.
Speaker:You know, you can usually get away with about six, six front to back and eight wide.
Speaker:Or is better, you'll feel less constrained.
Speaker:You want to harm the cat or break, break a lamp.
Speaker:You're inside.
Speaker:No oops is right.
Speaker:And then, so do you give any feedback on the physical exertion side?
Speaker:I mean, not just the tennis, but a lot of people, Peloton, you know, just the actual experience
Speaker:where you could actually, you know, how many steps, what kind of calories do you do anything
Speaker:on those lines?
Speaker:Good question, even a good suggestion.
Speaker:No, we haven't yet.
Speaker:But I will tell you, it's really interesting.
Speaker:The better, the better player that uses it, the quicker they become sweaty using it.
Speaker:It's really interesting because of their insistence upon executing every piece of the physical
Speaker:movement correctly.
Speaker:That I mean, you know, it's in grain.
Speaker:They can't help it.
Speaker:Fascinating.
Speaker:So for now, we can basically just attach it to our Apple watch or lace clips or whatever we have
Speaker:on there that we can work out and track it, that be really cool to have that part of your
Speaker:technology as well as it at some point.
Speaker:Yeah, we have not done that.
Speaker:But that is certainly something that's worth doing because I, you know, I'm glad you brought
Speaker:that up.
Speaker:I made a note of it earlier for exercise, this thing's fantastic.
Speaker:I mean, repeating tennis strokes is good exercise.
Speaker:Yeah, we've talked about that because that's part of what we believe the market here is,
Speaker:it's, okay, maybe it's not the elite player that's jumping into this every time.
Speaker:Maybe that's not the only target because we've got the kids that are playing video games and
Speaker:now they're getting their exercise.
Speaker:But I think a parent might look in and the kid goes to bed and the parents sneak in and
Speaker:grab in the kids toy.
Speaker:I'm going to go in the garage.
Speaker:I'm going to get myself some exercise, get some reps in before my match in the morning.
Speaker:That's exactly right.
Speaker:And I mean, one of the tools, one of the great uses for this as a tool is warming up.
Speaker:You can get some really concentrated, concentrated time in doing a lot of hits.
Speaker:I mean, 10 minutes of this thing is fantastic.
Speaker:I know people have done it for an hour.
Speaker:I think that's, that's a good chunk.
Speaker:But, but the exercise piece of it and the warmup for being on the court is fantastic.
Speaker:Yeah, we thought of a few ways this could do well because one of our targets is to get this
Speaker:information to Metro Atlanta specifically.
Speaker:So we've always got Metro Atlanta and the style of tennis player that we have here in mind
Speaker:when we have conversations like this and it's not even just the tennis player.
Speaker:I mean, take we tennis aside plenty of kids were learning how to keep score and that's a
Speaker:question.
Speaker:I looked into the software specifically, is this drill related?
Speaker:Do I have the ability to play against a friend or a robot or be able to, is there any of that yet?
Speaker:Not yet.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:We've, you know, we've concentrated on the simulation aspect.
Speaker:There's a little robot who's a cute little robot.
Speaker:His name is Woody because as you, I don't know if you look website where Mark Woodford is
Speaker:associated with this.
Speaker:He's a, you know, don't know him personally.
Speaker:No, but we know we know of him certainly.
Speaker:Yeah, he's a spectacular guy.
Speaker:He's extraordinary and he's been a great help in a million ways and, you know, working through
Speaker:a lot of the routines and performance.
Speaker:To that point, I wouldn't argue for example, there's some world-class player living
Speaker:right now, a world-class player playing at the top of the game is going to use this to work
Speaker:on his strokes certainly not.
Speaker:And that goes to some extent to the limitations of the hardware of the headset.
Speaker:This is really good from, you know, beginner to 455.0.
Speaker:Yeah, and that's, and that's so much fun because we're trying to figure out where this goes.
Speaker:Is everybody talks about affordability and accessibility in all those terms?
Speaker:We have a different view of some of those things here in Atlanta because tennis here is mostly
Speaker:free.
Speaker:And so when we have that question, especially coming out of New Jersey or New York and New
Speaker:England side or the California side of tennis, especially what in Chicago area of there where
Speaker:the weather doesn't allow you to play all the time, you need indoor courts.
Speaker:Tennis gets expensive in other places, but it's relatively free here.
Speaker:So a little bit of the argument of saying, "Hey, we're making it more accessible."
Speaker:From our point of view, that's a rain day or the twice a year that you don't want to go outside
Speaker:because it's below 30 degrees, right?
Speaker:But in this case, it's such a great addition to what we can offer because as an example,
Speaker:my tennis for children business offers rain day workouts for our beginner kids.
Speaker:And I don't know that we're going to get every kid in, you know, in a $400 set of goggles
Speaker:with all the stuff because that's actually making it more expensive from an Atlanta point
Speaker:of view. But if you've already got it, which a lot of these families do, it really be wonderful.
Speaker:So okay, everybody put on your, put on your meta quest two, is that, did I get that right?
Speaker:Met a quest?
Speaker:Well, yes.
Speaker:At some point, I'm going to have all this ready to go.
Speaker:And I'll be competent with the conversation.
Speaker:But then do your shadow swings and that's one of those things.
Speaker:Step, pivot, forehand, step, you know, split step, pivot.
Speaker:All those things that we just would love the kids would be even more excited doing it without their
Speaker:physical tennis racket in this case because the parents are less scared they're going to break
Speaker:a land.
Speaker:Well, yeah.
Speaker:And that's called homework.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Exactly what we call it.
Speaker:And here's a case where you can assign it.
Speaker:And you said you do your homework.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Tough homework, though.
Speaker:I wish my homework had been like that, right?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:I've got a lot of time to go to school.
Speaker:Bob, you got anything else?
Speaker:I want to run to my--
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, that's quite a lot.
Speaker:I was just looking at the video because the other question I had is trying, is there a component
Speaker:where they can watch themselves after they've participated?
Speaker:There, yeah, there's a way, it's an interesting thing.
Speaker:You can, there's a thing called casting.
Speaker:And I suppose you can record that too.
Speaker:You can record the entire thing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:There are some buttons you got to push.
Speaker:It's not that isn't the most user-friendly.
Speaker:You could record users, health internally.
Speaker:We have not done anything to implement that as-- but that's an interesting suggestion too.
Speaker:There's also a way to project it on G&TV.
Speaker:But that can have-- that can slow the whole system down.
Speaker:It's a sub-computeing resources.
Speaker:I just want to get from a coaching standpoint.
Speaker:As I tell, we deal a lot with adults that as an adult, you do lose out on the-- actually
Speaker:watching other players.
Speaker:Growing up in New York, we had certain court hours.
Speaker:The club would open up Saturday morning, four is early and it was for free.
Speaker:We were allowed to hang out until 12 o'clock.
Speaker:If you know, a card happened to open up, we could run down and get 10 more minutes, 15 more
Speaker:minutes hitting.
Speaker:But we had to watch a lot of tennis.
Speaker:And adults don't.
Speaker:They show up, they play, and they leave.
Speaker:And I love the fact that when you play, you see the spacing.
Speaker:First of all, so you start the idea of training on another object.
Speaker:I think we take for granted, but people don't realize that they spend so much time focusing
Speaker:part of the progression and a player is learning that there's somebody besides you on the
Speaker:court.
Speaker:You're still on the hit the ball phase.
Speaker:I think that's a society problem.
Speaker:Yeah, you're probably right, exactly.
Speaker:But that's the other part that they're going to get the extra reps in a fun environment, exposing
Speaker:you to something that they don't take enough responsibility for.
Speaker:Well, I would say part of my answer to that is stay tuned.
Speaker:We believe that as a tool for coaching, this is a big deal.
Speaker:Yeah, for accountability of making good use.
Speaker:It's like anything.
Speaker:I've shown my instruments piano.
Speaker:So what I do when I was a kid, I had to listen on Saturday morning or whatever it is.
Speaker:Did I practice until the next Saturday morning?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:What is the point?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I was truly.
Speaker:And in order to get proficient, you have to practice.
Speaker:In order to practice, you have to love.
Speaker:I had a daughter who singing became her instrument because piano was difficult.
Speaker:I'm like, of course, it's difficult.
Speaker:If it was easy, everybody would play piano.
Speaker:But you're going to be glad that you have this rudimentary knowledge later in life.
Speaker:Again, when you're talking to a child later in life is tomorrow.
Speaker:So it kind of gets lost in the translation.
Speaker:But there's a lot of truth.
Speaker:This is the more fun we can make it, the more likely they're going to gravitate and pick it up
Speaker:to it.
Speaker:There's definitely a fuse.
Speaker:And you think, like you said, the warm up alone, whether it be jumping, rope, we all in
Speaker:the benefits of static versus dynamic.
Speaker:You see, you still see it.
Speaker:People go out there and do static stretches.
Speaker:You're going to hurt yourself.
Speaker:Do dynamic first.
Speaker:Get lost then come back.
Speaker:But this is the way they were trained.
Speaker:All these things, you wouldn't have to say it anymore.
Speaker:People just pick it up.
Speaker:I'm going to go hit my headset for 15 minutes.
Speaker:I'm going to walk on the court and sweat.
Speaker:Think about a boxer.
Speaker:They never walked out, not sweating.
Speaker:They would do a workout before they got the ring because you got a break as sweat before
Speaker:you go compete.
Speaker:And this is just going to help.
Speaker:Yeah, that's these are great points.
Speaker:I certainly, this is what you do.
Speaker:Feel free to use them.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What's coming up next, Mark?
Speaker:What do you have?
Speaker:Well, we're expanding a lot of things.
Speaker:We're in terms of visualizations, facilitation, and coaching.
Speaker:I won't go beyond that.
Speaker:But we see it as a, look, this is a platform for learning tennis.
Speaker:What we had to do was perfect our platform.
Speaker:And it's pretty good.
Speaker:Close right now.
Speaker:So nice.
Speaker:I like that transparency.
Speaker:As Bobby says, it's transparency.
Speaker:It's humility.
Speaker:It says, this is where we are.
Speaker:This is what we are now.
Speaker:We're not trying to take over the world.
Speaker:We're going to get this piece right.
Speaker:And the next steps will let you know when we're there.
Speaker:There's not a lot of grandiose claims.
Speaker:Oh, we will be allowed to take over the world then.
Speaker:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But take us with you.
Speaker:Yeah, all right.
Speaker:You can let me know when I'm ready to take over the world.
Speaker:Yeah, we'll let you know.
Speaker:Then you take a cold.
Speaker:I'll call you tomorrow.
Speaker:Mark, I noticed Sean is kind of a lot more animated through the course of this
Speaker:conversation too.
Speaker:You see the hands are flying.
Speaker:I guess talking about.
Speaker:Oh, see, but you know, this is where New York meets me to Italian.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:My wife is Italian.
Speaker:So I'm IBM Italian by marriage.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:This is the same smart.
Speaker:Like I've got my Ecuadorian flag hanging up, right?
Speaker:You got the Italy flag.
Speaker:See, it's smart man.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:So I'm going to use that smart.
Speaker:And I'm going to ask you the question, which is our favorite question.
Speaker:Well, it's my favorite question.
Speaker:And coming from your experience as a player, as an inventor, and as a tennis fanatic, I think
Speaker:is what you call yourself.
Speaker:A tennis nut sometimes.
Speaker:It's not.
Speaker:If you were king of tennis and you could change anything or adjust anything or invent anything,
Speaker:you were king of tennis for a day or however long it took, is there anything you would change
Speaker:about tennis today?
Speaker:There are some really intractable international conflicts.
Speaker:And I would say the tennis governance with the Tower of Babel model that they seem to have
Speaker:is a big thing that we'd all want to change.
Speaker:Because there are so many participants.
Speaker:And I think that it'd be-- and you look at the things that pop up to try to solve all of the
Speaker:problems for, I would say, you know, starting with the players who are they--that's
Speaker:all in doubt that they've got to live with this stuff.
Speaker:And I would say tennis governance, I know they make efforts.
Speaker:These are all expert and caring people who want to do the best thing.
Speaker:But boy, boy, from what I've seen, if a king of tennis, well, and have to be smart enough
Speaker:to figure it out too.
Speaker:But I think I'd start there.
Speaker:I appreciate the humility again.
Speaker:And when you say-- and I'll push your little say, OK, well, you say tennis governance.
Speaker:Are you talking United States?
Speaker:Are you talking global?
Speaker:All world.
Speaker:This is an international sport.
Speaker:People are in diverse parts of the world overnight.
Speaker:They could lose today.
Speaker:And, you know, two days later, they have to be on a court again.
Speaker:I'm different surface.
Speaker:It's unbelievable.
Speaker:Very true.
Speaker:Yeah, for what we witnessed, the effort and commitment of these kids is unbelievable.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:Well, we'll follow up because we want to have you back, especially
Speaker:as your path with true tennis VR.
Speaker:I'm sure it's true tennisbr.com for anybody listening.
Speaker:That's exactly true spelled TRE.
Speaker:TRE, yep.
Speaker:So true tennis, your path with true tennis takes you long.
Speaker:We want to bring you back and find out where you end up because again, you're taking us
Speaker:with you.
Speaker:Let me ask you more, obviously, you're aware of your competitors.
Speaker:I mean, you're just my nature.
Speaker:So we want everybody to succeed in a perfect world.
Speaker:If you've spoken in different people of taking different approaches.
Speaker:And like I said, yours is refreshing and with what you've come across to us.
Speaker:Do you see the possibility for combinations?
Speaker:I mean, does the technology match?
Speaker:Because I know one person's taking a completely different angle competitive.
Speaker:They want to do worldwide tournaments.
Speaker:And again, it all comes back to I've had people try to get into the beverage space.
Speaker:And I'm like, yeah, you talked to anybody.
Speaker:There's one question.
Speaker:It's a taste good.
Speaker:Forget about everything else.
Speaker:It doesn't taste good.
Speaker:I don't care if it's most that we've started about apple cider vinegar.
Speaker:You know, it's the healthiest thing in the world.
Speaker:I'm not drinking it because you can't.
Speaker:It's horrible.
Speaker:So if the product doesn't produce, you can have all the aspirations.
Speaker:So you know, speak to that if you don't mind.
Speaker:Well, I want to say two things.
Speaker:I mean, you basically went to the most important issue, which is, you want to make a new soda.
Speaker:As it tastes, that's the, that's the, that's the count called foundation.
Speaker:Right, what's the most important thing about a drink?
Speaker:I mean, what's the most important thing about reproducing tennis in a technical, you know,
Speaker:artificial setting.
Speaker:And what you got to realize is this is a really weird problem.
Speaker:In virtual reality, there's nothing there.
Speaker:If you throw a ball, it means nothing.
Speaker:This is a completely, you have to reproduce every moment of, of everything in there.
Speaker:Build the foundation.
Speaker:The other thing I would say, though, is as as an inventor, as an entrepreneur, I appreciate
Speaker:an anybody who's sticking it out there and trying, building something and trying to make
Speaker:it work.
Speaker:So hats off to them.
Speaker:I think, you know, our approach, I think is, is a wise approach.
Speaker:But that would be my, that would be my response.
Speaker:Well, there you have it.
Speaker:We want to thank Rejovenate for use of the studio and be sure to hit that follow button.
Speaker:Also, we've been nominated for a podcast award, the best tennis podcast.
Speaker:For more about that, check the show notes.
Speaker:And with that, we're out.
Speaker:See you next time.
Speaker:[Music]
